Posted
by
samzenpus
on Wednesday March 22, 2006 @08:09PM
from the you're-going-to-love-the-new-alien-kid dept.

robyn217 writes "Dell just confirmed today that it had acquired boutique PC vendor Alienware. Alienware's Nelson Gonzalez said that his company will continue on with its own brand, design, sales and marketing, and support, though, so Alienware isn't going anywhere just yet. Gonzalez also said that Alienware PCs would not carry a Dell logo, and that he would report directly to Jim Schneider, Dell's chief financial officer. "I think that you'll find it very hard to find the Dell name on the [Alienware] web site," he said." The rumor is now fact.

Not Porche, Porsche..and not even them. There's a spinoff called FA Porsche Design Group GmbH. They've designed everything from the LaCie hard drive to hair dryers to the only-in-Japan Subaru Legend B4 (link here: http://www.supercars.net/cars/1770.html [supercars.net], and that's the production model, the prototype looked better).

Yes, a *very* different company than the legend that brought us the 911.

Except Alienware is already on the "standard platform" -- anyone can buy the AMD/Intel/NV/ATI parts. Rather than Old Saturn, AW is more along the lines of a custom car tuner or conversion van company that buys bodies from GM.

except that Saturn was a GM company from the begining they just purposely left off the GM brand as a experiment in a different approach to car making.
while the cars a lot more standardized now, I would not say they lost the quality. I owned a Saturn from the original SL2 to the later gen SL2 and my parents own the Ion. While Saturn did lose some of its individuality, its a much less expensive car to build and support than it once was. And they run a lot better than my SL did. Lets not forget, the Cobalt i

On a side note, one of the guys I work with bought a red Ford GT several months ago. Drove it to work one day and let me get up close and personal with it; damn, they are even more gorgeous in person than in the photos! And you could hear it across the company campus when he fired it up. Too bad they're closing production, it's a sweet, sweet ride!

If you had ever driven or been in a Ferrari, you would know that the build quality on a new Japanese produced Honda is better in terms of the details and finish. If Honda wanted to make Ferrari cost cars, then it would and probably would do it better. Oh, and you can put a Japanese custom ricer against a Ferrari that cost 2 or 3 times more on a quarter mile or track and the Ferrari will eat dust.

"
Honda was the first plastic car maker that I could think of.(Hint: Plastic cars == cheap and not durable)"

Yeah, those Hondas have a reputation for non-durability. Got that right.
Do you live in Detroit, by chance, or have you just been in a cocoon for 25 years?

I think he's probably referring to the plastic-over-styrofoam bumpers vs real metal bumpers that had all the detriot iron-heads sneering in derision back in the early days. Even still, I would ask him when was the last time he saw a Ford Mu

Y'know, "durable" isn't a word one applies to anything top-of-the-line. It's almost not even a design consideration.A durable car can be driven after a serious accident. A durable car puts up with no maintenance for 20,000 miles. A durable car can be fixed by someone with less than $500 worth of tools.

In the same way -- a durable computer keeps chugging along with four cubic inches of dust inside the case. A durable computer is still usable with a blown capacitaotor and a failing hard drive. A durable

I saw X-Type a few days ago the rear end reminded me of a Ford Contour. Then there was the XK8 from around 2001-2002 where the dash and steering wheel looked like it came out of a Tarus, except they were nice wood.

Um- I think the point isn't about reliability- Hondas are reliable- Ferraris, especially V12s, are notoriously unreliable.
The point is, Honda makes plain Jane, reliable cars. (Painting them neon green and putting a giant wing on a front wheel drive car doesn't make them non-vanilla)
The point is, that like Ferrari, Alienware is a unique, cultish thing. Dell and Honda make reliable products w/out much flash.
Would you trust Chrysler or VW to make your Lamborghini? How about Ford to make your Aston, or VW to

Yes, and Ford owns Aston, And VW owns Bugatti. Chrysler owned Lamborgini in the 80's, before VW bought them. Would you trust VW to make your Bentley or Rolls? Chrysler also owned Maserati.... I was being sarcastic....

I wonder whether Alienware machines will continue to use AMD chips, or whether pressure on Dell from Intel will lead to their gradual phasing out. If the latter, then I can't see Alienware hanging on to the bleeding-edge gaming market...

In other news, Alienware has aquired Dell's entire server devision and will ship four-way and two-way opteron systems within a few weeks.

I don't think Dell would go so far out of their way to diversify their offerings just so they could throw it all away. If Dell wanted to sell Intel only, they had everything they needed already, and there would have been no point in the aquisition.

Look at the Dell DJ. It hasn't gotten anywhere at all because Dell is just not a brand that normal people associate with cool gadgets and computers. Well that and Apple has the holy trinity of music distribution, but anyway...

Dell stands to reap a lot of benefits by letting Alienware be Alienware. It sends money their way and is a brand that helps them fight Apple. Switching them to Dell would dull the appeal of the product line if for no other reason than Dell is seen as the functional, not fast and gamer machine, makers.

Punctuation is overrated it's not like you cannot understanding everything I'm saying because I'm not using periods commas colons semi-colons or parenthesis I wonder if those count as punctiation anyway right I mean we should just dump all of thoseandgetridofspacesandapostropheswhilewereatit

They could form a contract with the employees as part of an employment contract. I know very 1970s of me, nobody signs contracts with employees anymore everybody is "right to work".... but it still can be done.

this is a pretty clueless comment. businesses acquire other businesses quite often, and contracts with the acquired principals are an integral part of those transactions. for all we know there could be a clause that says if Dell tries to put a Dell logo on an Alienware box then controlling interest in Dell will pass to the Alienware guy.

And everyone who bought an Alienware computer is what, precisely? I'm going to go with either ignorant or fanboy (well, most likely both). Not all fanboys are geeks, even if most geeks are fanboys. I'm just glad we haven't PC'd "fanboy" yet, but knowing the male:female ratio among geeks, it's not too big of a problem yet. In fact I don't even hate Dell... I'd never buy one of their PCs again (oh the days before knowing about Newegg were sad indeed), but their LCDs are top-notch and they can beat even th

In my opinion Alienware sells overpriced hardware that simply looks cooler because of their case mods. I think the typical Alienware buyer thinks that this makes them oh-so-much better than someone who buys a Dell, I mean they don't even come standard with neon lights. I am going to enjoy asking Alienware customers how their Dell is doing. Lets see them try and brag about a Dell computer, with a straight face.

Good question, but I think you know the answer that that. Give yourself credit; you're smarter than that;)In all honesty, I would say yes! Remember, the CFO (Chief Financial Officer) main job is to save money and ensure better profit margins. As such, inventory consolidation will no doubt be at the top of their list. It may start out small with little parts...say a power supply brand/model here, CDROM drives there... But eventually, Alienware will be nothing more than a brand. An empty shell of a name. Eve

First, you don't get economy of scale. This is hugely important in consumer electronics. The more a company can buy of a widget, the cheaper each widget costs. It's not like a 10% off thing, it can be like a 50% off thing if your volumes are high enough. Related to this, Dell, HP, Lenovo have enormous power to drive component prices down. Their number 1 weapon is competitors for any given product. If a customer says "Give me X", they lose that benefit, prices go up. Go to a car dealership, price out a car. Then go to another, and say 'beat this price'. Works great, you can get a honda for under dealer invoice if you try hard. Same principle. In this respect Apple is different, it is more willing (not TOTALLY willing, just more willing) to lock in to one vendor it really likes and designs around it. This is why they're more expensive, even with x86 architectures.

Second, you can't support it cheaply. You cannot take any random combinations of components and have a guarantee (that you'll bet your business on) that it'll be supported. The only way to give guarantees is to build it, test it, find the bugs, and design them out. That is extremely expensive to do for every combination. This is, in fact, why Apple works the way it works. They only give you a small number of options, support a small number of drivers, and tell you "this is your product". They can support that 100%, do something they haven't tested and you're on your own. It's also why they are probably the most reliable machines: they made their job very easy. Even the big three PC makers can't do that.

Finally, the market wants cheap and wants supported. Yes there are niche customers who know what components they want, but not many do. Those that do don't always know what technical problems may exist beneath the hood. Memory timing problems (not CAS latency but setup, hold, duty cycle, DQS, etc.) are probably the #1 issue on motherboards, you can take the superstar motherboard and the superstar memory company and they may not work together, even though both claim to support some standard. Worse, they may appear to work together but be subtly corrupting your filesystem. There are all kinds of deeply concerning electrical problems that may exist. This happens throughout the system. No one tests their component level products to the level they should be tested. Sad, but true.

There are plenty of companies that will let you build your own box, but they'll necessarily always be small, and always attract an audience that is more patient with bugs. Personally, in spite of every problem I know of that can go wrong in a computer, I still build my own. I knowingly invite this problem because I'm willing to risk the bugs (and pay for them, if need be) for the performance. Most people do not, much like most people do not buy exotic sports cars.

Proprietary is a funny word. I'd use it on Apple, since their system is closed, anyone who wnats to work in it must go through Apple. I'm not sure it applies in your example. PERC cards are an example of a card Dell supports because it either built them in house, or spec'd them for use in their servers. They can support it from the ground up. It's proprietary in that its Dell branded, may or may not have been made in-house at Dell, but it's still a PCI/PCI-X/PCIe card. You ought to be able to replace it with an equivalent function card, although you won't be supported.

You would not call a nVidia GPU based card proprietary when made by Asus or Gigabyte, I'm not sure how it's any more proprietary if its made by Dell. Asus or Gigabyte don't "rebrand" their video cards, they are independent designs using the nVidia chipset. Similarly all the big PC manufacturers design many of their components in house, outsource some, offshore others, but rarely do their own chipsets (IBM may be the only one that does). Doing your own boards does give you tremendous control of costs, hence the reason you see this happen. It doesn't mean they're using "cheap components" so much as they are negotiating component cost down by playing vendors off on each other.

Maybe Dell wants to be in a position to leverage it's sales base such that they can start to ease the Intel pressure on them?Well, I'm supposing that Dell WON'T remove AlienWare's name and look and feel.

BTW, didn't some high-level guy from Dell disavow or say there was no substantiation to the rumor? I love it when these people, thinking they can manipulate stock prices, public sentiment, and control the rumor mill just flat out LIE as if that will improve their image, too... It's ONE thing to say, "we're i

Although Dell's acquisition was widely anticipated, Alienware chief executive Nelson Gonzalez said that his company will remain a wholly-owned subsidiary of Dell, continuing its own brand, design, sales and marketing, and support.

Shucks, and I wanted to drop $4,000 on a new Alienware and talk to "Roger" from "Ohio" who was so nice to me when I owned my last Dell. While we rebooted the machine for the third time he asked me how the Packers were doing in the world series.

Lets see, I called Dell about a laptop sent in for depot repair a week ago: 2 hrs on the phone in two calls that got dropped twice. (Boring detail: The first accented voice dropped the call after 1/2 hr (on hold). The second stated I needed to speak to Customer Support (xfer, 1/2 hr #2). The Next person said: No record of that machine showing up: Lets see if we can find the waybill number from Delayed or Hellishly Late (DHL), call droped after another 45 minutes.)Now we can get our calls outsourced to Alien

Dell gets to leverage Alienware's upstream distribution partners (Tyan, Antec, Arima, etc.). This allows them to easily pursue alternate server and workstation designs than the existing Quanta/Foxconn stuff and also get with other memory/HD vendors, etc.They also get their customer portfolio (think: upgrades). It also gets a "high-end" brand to associate with its high-margin products (to compete with Apple).

I still remember when EA bought Origin. Garriot was quoted saying that Origin will still have control over their games and EA will just allow them to make bigger and better games with a wider distribution. I remember this because I remember it happened around the time Ultima 7 came out, and it worried me. While I never bought an Alienware box, these statements seem similar. As mentioned by others, Dell's hand will be there pushing in one direction or another. Maybe I am just jaded because my programming job at Dell was outsourced to a $5/hour Brazilian, but Dell is evil. No body smiled at work, and was always worried about loosing their jobs. Evil biz practices, like the Printer fiasco, and all of that makes me avoid Dell products.

My deparment bought five Alineware Area51m 766 laptops in 2004. All of them have had to be returned, all with unique hardware issues. Three of them have gone back twice. Their tunraround for returns approaches three weeks.

Yes they are fast (very fast), but not worth it in the least. I've read similar horror stories about their desktops.

So we have Alienware being fast and unreliable, combined with Dell who's boxes are slow and unreliable (Dell's laptops are pure junk). Someone wake me up from this nightmare, please! No good can come from this union.

"Nelson Gonzalez said that his company will continue on with its own brand, design, sales and marketing, and support, though, so Alienware isn't going anywhere just yet. Gonzalez also said that Alienware PCs would not carry a Dell logo"

Then what the heck is dell in charge of? Profit taking?"he would report directly to Jim Schneider, Dell's chief financial officer."

I've seen a number of comments questioning what Dell or Alienware gets out of this deal, if the two 'brands' remain effectively distinct. They both get a number of things out of it:1) They get an existing, well-known high-end brand. Rather than trying to make a new high-end brand, which would require major expenses as well as a large change in public opinion. Would you want to buy a $4.00 coffee if it was sold under the, say, Maxwell House brand name? No offense to Maxwell House, but people don't necessarily see them as a high-end brand of coffee. They could try to start their own premium brand, and advertise it as such, but it still would bear the name of Maxwell House. If they would buy Starbucks and kept it mostly separate, they would be able to have an instant presence in the high-end market without having to carve out a niche from the existing brands.2) They get to consolidate portions of the infrastructure. If a company prides itself on its products, it still has other, less glamorous departments, such as distribution. Though the existing distribution may need to expand to handle the additional load, it still would be smaller than the two individual networks. Note that distribution is used here as an example; since they ship using carrier companies, they probably don't have their own distribution networks. The concept may still hold true for certain other departments, though.3) Alienware gets the benefit of Dell and their extensive advertising network. Where did you first hear about Alienware? Was it from an ad in a newspaper? A commercial on TV? What's more likely is that you heard about them from more specialized advertising, or from other techno-geeks. However, if Dell can convince the general public that "Hey! You're upgrading to the finer things in life - a faster car, a bigger TV - why not get a high-end computer too?" As a result, the Alienware brand gets more commonly known as a high-end computer brand, and sells more units.4) Alienware gets the benefit of being able to expand more and eliminate bottlenecks in service. If they're waiting until there's money in the budget to expand the repair center, there are probably three or four other departments that can also use the increased budget. But if Dell is willing to put some money into Alienware, and let them smooth out the wrinkles in service, then they'll be able to expand the repair center, upgrade the assembly line, and train more workers all at once.So as long as Dell keeps their promise to let Alienware continue on with its own brand, design, sales and marketing, and support, it looks like the beginning of a highly profitable relationship.